


From Where We Stand in History

by mako_lies (wingeddserpent)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Episode: s04e10 Heaven and Hell, Gen, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:54:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/mako_lies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is history between Castiel and Anna, but it can change nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Where We Stand in History

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EmmaDeMarais](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaDeMarais/gifts).



> Remix of [History and Words Left Unspoken](http://emmademarais.livejournal.com/192798.html).

Castiel still cannot recognize her. Anna's shell is fair and pointed, a tumble of blood hair, and splashes of vibrant color that are not the hallowed gold he remembers.

Twenty years, hardly a moment for the likes of them, and here she is--flesh and blood, and a twist of a smile that is somewhere between that telltale twitch of her upperleft wing he recalls and that sardonic look of Dean's Castiel is beginning to recognize. There is something almost-human in the way she looks at Dean (but Anna is not human; she cannot be, even in this Graceless shell), and the look draws the man within this vessel to the surface, bubbling with some longing. 

+++

 _Do you see, Castiel?_ Anael asked him, drawing his attention to the human cradling the tiny human to its chest. The large human showed all its teeth, babbling in a high-pitch. _Do you see?_

Her wings glimmered golden as she watched the humans. _Are they not magnificent, brother?_

No, he did not see. But Castiel brushed his dark wings against her lower set, and Anael gleamed unseen over the entirety of the desert.

+++

Love. Anna loves Dean, loves him as she forgives him for treachery. For the desperation to save Sam that drove this man to the very Pit. Drove him to the razor. Castiel turns away as Anna kisses him, an action so gentle he cannot bear to witness his sister. His general. 

Beneath lurks that familiar (comforting) golden glimmer, barely perceptible even by his senses. As though by carving out her Grace, she did not lose all.

_I am sorry._

_No you're not. Not really. You don't know the feeling_ .

Again, the man beneath this flesh struggles, pulling and pushing against Castiel, wordless, and he cannot force Castiel out. (Castiel wants to understand. To understand the feeling, the thrashing against something he cannot change, but--he cannot. There is only the host. There is only obedience. Castiel cannot falter.)

+++

Castiel came to Anael in a derelict stretch of salted land. Smoke rose over a pile of human corpses, and Anael's bright Grace shone above the field as the sun the humans could not see. She asked, _And your post, brother?_

Her attention did not shift, so Castiel followed it. A band of humans, three or four, stood before a corpse. The smallest human hugged the body to its chest, water flowing freely down its dirt-streaked face. Such strange creatures, humans. Why they deserved the scrunity of all the host...

 _It is largely unchanged, sister_. 

Anael hummed, the sound filling him with light, and the humans turned their gazes to their sky--as though they could feel Anael's melody. Impossible. _They mourn_ , Anael told him, _It is as we sung for the Morning Star. A similar dirge. Do you hear it?_

If Castiel did, how could Anael compare humans--so reckless and feeling and imperfect--with the angels?

+++

Castiel questions as he advances--surely this is not just? Surely, there is another way? 

The answer is demons. Demons prevent Anna's death. How can this be? The Latin burns into his vessel-- _Why don''t you go run to daddy?--_ and the man inside screams and screams, surging up to fill up the places where the demon rips Castiel out, and how could this, how could this happen? Castiel feels himself unmooring from the vessel like--

Dean Wincheter saves Castiel. Fear glows dark as Dean faces the demon he knows perhaps better than his own brother. Castiel is barely able to silence the screaming beneath this body's skin, when Anna shatters the chamber housing her Grace. It flows out as she screams-- _shut your eyes!_ \--while Castiel watches the Grace return to Anna. First, it flashes blue, then sings gold--in the explosion as the skin evaporates beneath Anael's power, her wings flare out, her true faces bared to him, and he cannot look away as her form stretches on and on. 

+++

Anael examined the gleaming curves of her talons, drifting high above the Earth they were tasked with keeping. _Have you ever wondered what it would be like to need to eat?_ she asked him, and he found himself beneath the scrutiny of all five of his faces. _It would be strange_ , she decided, without waiting for his response.

Castiel soared higher than she, just for a moment, to consider Earth from her height. It looked the same as ever, save with more and more reapers and smoke. Instead, he joined her on her current, ignoring the gunfire across the ocean--such vile hatred, used to magnitudes Castiel had never seen before. Human ingenuity was perhaps the most surprising aspect of the creatures. 

 _I never considered it_. _It seems inefficient, sister_. 

Her fourth face closed its eye to rest. (Had he given the wrong answer? Surely it was the only answer.) Anael gave a single, slow flap of her wings, the ocean below stirring with her motion. _Perhaps that is not the point,_ she mused, _No matter. You have new orders: you will be in Pingfang. Uriel will be joining you after he is finished in Manila. The two of you will observe and report back to me your findings._

Anael twisted midair and directed her flight east. _Be well, brother._

+++

Anna is gone. Disappeared to wherever a rogue angel may temporarily evade the wrath of Heaven. Castiel knows her, knows her faces and wings and form, knows her questioning and fearless command and he finds--he finds he wishes her well. Despite everything. 

His gaze draws to Dean and Sam--can he see it? In the worn slope of their shoulders, in the limp Sam cannot hide, in the pinched face Dean makes whenever Sam cannot see (either pain or guilt, the expressions are similar), in the way that Dean rushed to Castiel's defense, in the way Sam half-hovers over his brother. Can Castiel see it?

Uriel calls Castiel's attention. With their mission failed, it does not due to linger. No matter. Castiel cannot see with Anna's eyes. He cannot see the humans as she does. If he is lucky, he will not have to kill her. 

But luck has nothing to do with the demands of the host.

 


End file.
